Light's Blog

Server-side sessions and authentication tokens are both methods used to authenticate users and maintain their state over the internet. However, they differ in how they store and manage this information. Server-Side Sessions In server-side sessions, the user state is stored on the server's memory. When a user logs in, the server creates and stores the session data (such as user account data and role) in its memory. The server then sends a session ID to the user's browser, which is typically stored in a cookie. This session ID is sent back to the server with each subsequent request, allowing the server to recognize and authenticate the user. This method requires the server to keep track of active sessions, which can consume significant memory resources if there are many concurrent users . Authentication Tokens Authentication tokens, on the other hand, encapsulate the user state within the token itself. When a user logs in, the server generates a token that contains user informati